Living in a relatively small town (one whom outsiders would consider to be that of a country town) brings with it its own labels. It becomes extremely difficult to try to deal with your own illness and perceptions of yourself, let alone attempting to deal with the prejudice and stigma of the society we are in.
In the eyes of the few who know of my life so far, I am considered to be one of the lucky ones. I am currently a suicide survivor. No one ever knew the extent of the pain and mayhem that occurs daily within my head. Twenty-four hours a day, three six five days a year - with no break, no chance to recharge.
I have suffered from depression since gosh knows when. I remember in primary school thinking ‘no one would miss me. What good is a fat tub of lard to anyone?’. My lacking self esteem was not helped by what my father said he thought of me, not to mention the kids at school, or even my own brother. I remember thinking, how easy it would be to wander to the train lines and just stay there; or how easily accessible household poisons were.
By the time I had reached around 12 or 13 things had gotten to the point where I felt I had no choice or no way out than to self harm. I would sit against my door, cutting, burning, whatever would give me the feeling that I was alive; that I felt something, anything.
Once I reached high school things only became worse. I went to a high school where I knew no one, and being the ‘oddball’ that I was/am, found it very hard to make friends. For the first six months or so I had no one. I would sit on my own pretending everything was fine, even though it clearly wasn’t. I found it hard to concentrate, and had teachers pressuring me to make friends, to ‘fit in’ with the others. Voicing that I prefer to be on my own did nothing, as this isn’t the mould they wanted. It wasn’t the ‘norm’ to be anti-social, so I had to change. Teachers thought I had a fairly bad attitude. I hated school. I hated myself. I hated coming home just to have another fight with mum about how I wasn’t trying, I wasn’t applying myself. It was all being done for attention, or so it was in their eyes.
From there on, I knew I could do the work (and at times I showed them I could), but from there on I was simply the trouble maker who was doing it for attention. I was known as the funny fat one, or the fat friend. At one point I was even the fat little sister. As my self esteem continued to decrease things only got worse as I moved onto drugs to ‘help me concentrate as well as stimulate weight loss’.. I liked myself more when I was on speed, I really did. I was on top of the world, and feeling worthless seemed a thing of the past. I was finally out of the black hole that had originally lead to the self harm – until I had the inevitable come down afterwards. Mum just thought I was overweight and lazy, when really I didn’t want to leave the house and do things as I had no motivation. I felt like there was no point in doing things. Not unless I had snorted something to get me going could I get out of that black hole that I had been in for so long.
By the time I had reached year 10 I had already acquired a drug habit of both valium and speed. It wasn’t unusual for me to have ‘a beer and a line’ for recess, and again for lunch. I felt I couldn’t function without it. I couldn’t be happy, or be motivated without it. My grades had indeed improved to show this, while others thought I had just ‘cleared my head’. How wrong they were.
Sometimes whilst self harming, I could hope and wish that someone, anyone would find me. I thought that if they did at least they would realise that I need help. I thought at the time that it would be much better than asking for the help, asking for help is a sign of weakness and would show to everyone that I was only doing it for attention. At the same time I was thankful that no one ever did find me, it gave me the chance to ‘feel alive’, like I had wanted oh so much.
Depression is not just an attitude problem. The young can suffer just as much as older people. Depression is not just a part of growing up. It's an illness that will not fix itself by 'getting a job', 'finding yourself' or just ‘snapping yourself out of it’.
Sometimes I would think that I need to work out how long I really wanted to go on, how long I really wanted to live so I could hurry up and do it so as to stop wasting everyone’s time. Then I would think, waste of time everyone’s time? No one ever knew I existed.
